Merry Christmas to All

Sweating in my room at 7:45 at night fighting the invasion of crickets, moths with rash-enduing dander, and the frogs determined to help remedy the situation it doesn’t feel much like Christmas time. The official countdown is 2 days on the American clock, 1 day on the Peruvian. Here we celebrate more the 24th. Well, to be more specific, we stay up until midnight, toast to Christmas with a “champagne” like substance, eat paneton (sweet bread with dried fruit inside, like a good fruitcake), drink hot chocolate, and devour a turkey. Yes, just as you are all thinking to yourself, no that’s not the most conducive to then going to bed and getting a good night’s sleep; so of course we then spend the next few hours drinking (for those who drink, I do not at site), talking, laughing, and all around remembering what a good year it had been.

While the signs of a Peruvian Christmas are starting to show up, here in the campo there’s none of that commercial crud to ruin Christmas. People have put up cardboard decorations on their doors. The most comical to me are the ones depicting a fir tree (we most defiantly don’t have anything even remotely resembling a fir growing near Nanchoc) and the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. When I asked the family with our red nosed friend on their door if they knew who it was, their response, “a rare breed of deer that live in New York City,” oh yes, I’m not in Kansas anymore…not that I ever was. My family’s one up-ed the neighbors thanks to having kids living in Lima, we have a fir tree that LIGHTS up. Yes, it’s red and green with lights that flicker in different patterns. I thought it was just a little to tacky when it first showed up…then my Peruvian campo side came through and now thinks it’s the coolest thing in the whole town. I’ll let ya’ll decide on your own if my Peruvian campo goggles have tainted the coolness:

PICTURE

This Christmas is going to go by a lot faster than last Christmas for a few reasons. The main one of which is that the rainy season has been slowly starting, rather than dumping on us like last year. So this means I’ll more than likely (now watch me go and jinx it) have electricity this year to celebrate the big day! Also, I’m counting down to more than Christmas, the 28th of December my parents and my brother, yes the rest of the Schwartz family, is flying to Peru to see me!!! So while I’ll be spending my second Christmas away from home, I’ll have the good fortune to celebrate the New Year with my family in Lima--A New Year in a new country for them. I’ve almost forgotten how much I hate Lima (especially after how much time I’ve spent their recently) because I’m so excited for their arrival.

Now I just have to decide if I trick my brother into eating food that he’d not normally eat…

Graduation Day

Today marked a very special day in the lives of the kiddies I work with. It was a day of great importance, grand celebrations, and as with all childhood rituals, a healthy pinch (or rather heap) of embarrassment. Today the 6th grade class graduated. Now I had never been to or seen what a Peruvian graduation ceremony is like…so needless to say I had no idea as to what I was in for.

Peruvian Graduation Ceremonies can only be described as a combination of a Quiensienera (Mexican rite of passage for women on their 15th birthday) and the prom from Hades. All the girls were dressed in matching Barbie doll dresses (just wait for the photo) with their hair done by a Dolly Parton-inspired hairdresser who lives in my town. The boys were all dressed like boys should be dressed for a graduation, black pants, dress shirt and tie. Simple. Go figure that they’d make the girls look like bad Barbie dolls and the boys get to retain some sense of self respect. Then again, my point of view could be skewed by the fact that I hate anything pink and frilly. Some of the girls actually seemed to have liked the dress they were wearing.

All of the girls except Jenny that is(Second girl from the left). If you read the earlier blog then this should not be a surprise, but just in case I’ll fill ya’ll in: Jenny is a now graduate from the 6th grade who is basically the Peruvian version of me, a tomboy at its finest, anything but girly, and extremely awkward in a pair of heels. She is a girl after my own heart. So as you can imagine, she was less than happy to be the in the new “my sized Barbie” dress. She takes the credit for the quote of the night: “Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, one of the plagues shows up.”

So what had happened was, about 30 minutes into the ceremony, right when we’re getting into the full swing of things, the crickets show up. Apparently every 4 rainy seasons or so we have a slight problem with our chirping friends, they appear in such amounts as to confuse them with rain. It started out as slightly bothersome. A cricket would land on a girl’s foot, she’d squeal and then it’d move on the bother the next guest until someone finally caught it and slammed it into the ground (the preferred Peruvian method for killing a cricket). But soon it because evident that there were far too many crickets to smash. I, as the resident photographer, had at least 5 climbing down my shirt while I was trying to take pictures of the poor girls in Barbie dresses posing with their families attempting to smile while screaming on the inside because there were 5 crickets crawling down their dresses. Next thing you know our little chirping friends are crawling in and around the snack food, the cakes, and getting trapped in the Pepsi bottles of the little ones causing both a ticked off 6 year old and an even more so ticked cricket. For those of you are thinking well “this sounds like when the party died down and everyone went home”…you’d be mistaken.

I was just waiting for when the guests would get tired of fighting the crickets. We fought the crickets through the ceremony. We fought the crickets through the picture taking. We fought the crickets through the required dancing (photographer not included in the dancing). We fought the crickets through the eating. And then this here gringa-photographer decided that she’d fought the crickets long enough and headed home to the safety of her room (cricket-less as of this moment…knock on wood). I figured everyone else would soon follow suit. You know how it goes, no one likes to be the first one to leave a party, but I figured maybe I’d have started a trend of surrendering to the cricket army and calling it a night. Well 2 hours after my departure they’re still blaring cumbia music, probably slamming crickets into the pavement with the beat in an exaggerated dance move. I may have been the only one who surrendered to the little chirping ones…but at least I still have my pride. I wasn’t in a pink frilly Barbie dress.

Home Sweet Home

December 1, 2008, 3ish pm I stumbled, quite literally off the bus from Chiclayo and landed in Nanchoc, Cajamarca. The bus dropped me off in front of the Health Post with my 2 bags each weighing way more than they should have (this is hindsight talking, at the time I thought I didn’t have enough) and left me in the dust. I was faced with the rather daunting task of hauling these bags the 10 yards to my front door all by myself. It was in that moment that I realized I was actually in the Peace Corps. That concept seemed to have evaded me during the 3 months of training suddenly smacked me square in the face. I managed to drag my bags to the front door to find the door locked and the house empty—damn. I then dragged my bags the 10 yards back to the Health Post all the while trying to remember at least ONE name of a Health Post employee or how to explain that I’m locked out of my house in Spanish. I walked into the waiting room and interrupted a training activity with all of the surrounding Health Posts. 15 pairs of eyes immediately turned on me and I resisted the urge to piss myself or run screaming for my mommy. I was saved by the OBGYN Dr. Emma who raised her arms over her head and belted “Look its Yennifer! How was your trip?” I then preceded to thank whatever higher power there might be for her giving the explanation of who I was and why I looked so lost to the 15 other health workers.

Looking back that seems so long ago. I now know almost all of those 15 eyes by name (a few left the area before I could learn their names), I better than to ever travel with that much crud, and I can talk my way out of almost any awkward situation. I consider myself lucky to actually feel at home in this place, I get homesick for Nanchoc when I’m doing a lot of Peace Corps traveling. Before my mother can breakdown crying let me state for the record that Durham, North Carolina is and forever will be my home and I miss it more than words can say. I know from talking to my fellow volunteers that actually feeling at home in your site is a rare commodity. I am fortunate enough to have real friends here and a host family that genuinely care for me. Aside from the baking heat and the pouring rain I couldn’t have asked for a better community to live in…ok well I could ask that they come to a few more meetings, but we can’t get to picky now can we?

I didn’t until recently realize how much I like this place. I went to Lima for medical checks and came out with a half cracked open tooth. Long story short I had a cavity that would put most bear’s winter house to shame and in the dentist’s efforts to excavate the cave-like hole he broke my tooth in half…without pain killers. So we can just sum that day up as an all around bad day. The day was then made worse by red-tape. We had to send x-rays and images to Washington to decide the next course of action, aka to fix the tooth or not to fix the tooth. I will admit I was distressed over my tooth-- I have a giant hole in my mouth currently being covered with a temporary paste that would freak out the most normal person. But I wasn’t getting all riled up over the in-limbo state of my tooth as much as I was about the possibility of missing my town’s 51st anniversary. The town’s anniversary is celebrated December 1-3rd, This wasn’t just the town’s party, I wanted to celebrate my 1 year in site milestone. This celebration was marking many a moment and I was in no mood to be in Lima in red-tape-limbo missing the soccer and parades.

We are lucky in Peace Corps Peru to have amazing doctors Suni and Jorge working for us who care about not only our health concerns but our personal dramas. I was all but expecting them to tell me that I was going to miss my town party and my 1 year mark in site and be stuck in Lima doped out on pain killers after a root canal. I was however surprised to find that Suni completely understood, we worked out a compromise: It was obvious that I need to have a root canal and a crown put on, even Washington agreed (thankfully!), but it was also equally as obvious to her that I couldn’t miss this moment in my site. So I was given an extra coat of the temporary cave-plugging paste and sent back to site to celebrate the 51st and the 1st anniversaries and will be returning to Lima in a week to enjoy more dental health adventures in Peru.

And as I write this I’m listening to the thumping of the base and the singing of a Cajamarca-Huano cover band at 11pm sunburned from a day of cheering on our horrible soccer team and watching the kids march in the parade. The day could have only been made better if my camera battery hadn’t died and I had it all on film…Oh well, we can’t have it all. But I can still cross my fingers that the band will go home by 1am so I can get some sleep…

A Rose by Any Other Name…

Shakespeare. I can honestly say I hadn’t thought of the old guy in tights since my senior year of High School when we were reading Romeo and Juliet. And even then the only thing I remember is a lot of funny talking and saying one thing and meaning another. I think it might have actually been during Mr. Lang’s class that I realized I would never, and I mean never, be any good at this literary thing. In math, when you say 2+2=4 that’s what you mean, it’s great no metaphors, no similes, none of this fancy stuff, just a problem waiting to be solved. But as much as I love my math, I’ve come to realize that, unfortunately, life’s got a whole lot more symbolism hiding around corners than equations. Damn you Shakespeare. So if you’re wondering where the heck I’m going with this, just hold your horses and give me a little while longer to set this up. Like I said, I ain’t no good (yes I did that intentionally) at this literary stuff.

Recently I got sick, very sick. And it wasn’t the usually Peace Corps gastrointestinal issues—though for the first time in my service I was actually hopping that it was. I had a fever, a really high fever. No coughing. No sneezing. No congestion. No rash. No GI distress. No nothing. Just a nice and high fever that occasionally would decide to turn into a lack of fever and leave me trembling and cold. I thought it had to be whatever was going around my town until I realized that everyone else who had a fever was also a human snot container. I took a deep breath in and then blew it all out through my nose…nope. Clean. It wasn’t the same cold that was going around. I gave it 2 days to go away on itself. I slept, a lot. The second day I actually slept for 18 hours that day. I had no appetite. I had to remind myself to eat, I’d start eating a sandwich and lose all interest in eating 2 bites in. While my dog loved this trend—more sandwiches for him-- that’s when I knew I had to be sicker than even I was letting on.

I decided to call out doctors. I somehow dragged myself out of bed to walk to the public phone. My head was throbbing, my arms felt as though they weighed 20lbs each, and according to everyone that I passed I was as “red as a cooked shrimp.” After talking to the doctors we were still clueless as to what I might have. The only plausible cause would have been my recent trip to Tumbes…and I didn’t like the sound of that. To fill in the people not associating Tumbes with Mosquitoes like us Peru-Peace Corps volunteers: Tumbes has a Ton of mosquitoes, and therefore dengue and malaria. So as I said, I didn’t like the sound of either of those. We decided to feel it out for another day, see if the fever went down with Tylenol, and go to Chiclayo if it got any worse. I was to call the doctors in the morning and let them know if I was better or worse.

I woke up the next day in a puddle of my own sweat, a fever of 103, and a throbbing headache. I did some math and realized that the phone doesn’t open until 9, the bus to Chiclayo leaves at 8…I had a decision to make without the doctor’s advice. If I waited to talk to them, I’d be stuck and sick in my site for 2 more days until the next bus out of town if I got worse. Then I thought a little more and realized I couldn’t really get much worse and still be moving…so I packed up some stuff and went to wait at the bus stop. I hadn’t reserved a seat, so I was just hoping that I looked as bad as I felt and that would get me out of Nanchoc and into Chiclayo.

It worked. The second the bus stopped the bus driver, usually a rather unobservant man (which his 2 accidents should attest too…and should make me weary to take his bus, but it’s the only option) said, “Wow gringa, you look horrible.” I wish I had some smart comeback for that, but the sheer act of moving was taking up all of my thinking power. I asked if there was room on the bus, and they gave me the front seat. Now, If I had know that all I needed to do to get the best seat on this bus, where we are usually packed in like sardines, was to be this sick…well I can’t honestly say I wouldn’t be sick more often. Not only did I get the good seat, they KICKED someone out of said seat so I could have it. I would have been more impressed if I didn’t feel like poo.

The bus ride was horrible. It’s a hot bus ride even without the fever this time of year. I felt even worse on the bus than I did in my bed in Nanchoc. The whole trip went by in a blur, and the next thing I knew we were at the bus stop and I was sweating buckets in the seat. I got up to climb over the seat (yeah that’s how we get out of the front seat) and…yep, those of you who know me probably would have seen this coming… I fainted. I managed to play it off unbeknownst to me, no one saw me starting to get up, and so no one noticed me faint. The guy who works on the bus shook me awake and helped me off the bus. They got me a cab and I made it to my hotel. I was then sent to the Chiclayo doctor, a medical office located (thankfully) 3 blocks from my hotel. I gave tubes of blood, swabs, poo and pee samples, and waited for the results. They didn’t have the Dengue test, so we were just going to rule everything else out and see.

I felt worse the first day I was in Chiclayo, but then started feeling a little better the next day. I called to get my test results, and of course they didn’t have them. My doctor tried to speed up the process…but it was no use, I had to stay until I heard what I had. The next few days passed much like the days in site; I spent way too much time in bed and was hot flashing like a 50 year old woman. The only improvements: cable TV and internet. But with each day I started feeling better, so that was a good sign right?

Finally we got some results back, all my blood work seemed to be normal, and it just said I had a virus. We had figured so much while I was in site, I was a little mad that I had given that much blood and that’s the only information we got out of it…not cool. I waited around some more, and the rest of the tests came back normal, just a virus. So I was told that I “either have dengue or a virus that wants’ to be dengue when it grows up.” Not exactly the good news I was hoping for. Dengue has no treatment other than sleeping and resting, and the mystery virus has nothing better. So, my means of getting better were nothing but what I’ve been doing…fun?

I decided I can sleep with the best of them at site, so I got on the next bus to site and headed home. I slept a lot better in my own bed, and it was nice being with my friends at site again. It had gotten a little lonely sitting in the hotel room all day. When people asked me what I had, I just translated what the doctors had told me. Then for some reason, Shakespeare’s “a rose by any other name would smell just a sweet” line came up in my head. Except I heard “a virus by any other name will suck just as much."

Random Collection of Stories too Short to be Their Own Blog

YAY I Won! …Now What?

I recently held a raffle for a blender. I was in dire need of raising money so that I could buy paint for a mural project. After running through the ideas of different fundraising ideas, the raffle seemed to require the least amount of work. Well turns out it was more work that I had originally expected. It’s harder than one might think to sell a S./1 raffle ticket during a town party, apparently S./1 can buy you a lot of candy for a whining kid. But after a long day I sold all 200 tickets, leaving me with a S./140 profit for paint! Score. We held the raffle and a woman who lives in a caserio without electricity won. Hmm, well yay she won…but now what’s she supposed to do? I think she only helped me out and bought a ticket because I’d be using the paint with her kids. She said not to worry, they’re supposed to be getting electricity by the end of the year (no matter that’s what they said last year as well…)

So a week and a half later I got a knock on my door. I was early in the morning, around 6am and Dona Julia wasn’t in town, so I wasn’t expecting any visitors. I opened the door and it was Jose, the son of the woman who won the raffle. “Good morning Yeni,” he said with a grin, “I was wondering if you could do me a favor?” I couldn’t think of a reason why not so I asked what the favor was. He pulled the blender out of a bag along with 5 bananas and a can of milk. “Can I use your electricity to make our juice?” Oh it was just too cute so I said “of course” and brought him and his supplies into the kitchen. We blended up the bananas and milk and then realized a fatal flaw in his planning. He’d biked the 20 minutes to blend his juice and forgot a leak proof container. After thinking for a few minutes I let him borrow a Tupperware of mine and he left with a big smile and his goods in a bag. An hour later he was back at the door with my washed Tupperware and a thank you message from his mother. It was just too cute.




Copy Cat

There is a girl in the 5th grade of Primary school who thinks I’m the coolest thing since sliced bread…and believe me, sliced bread is still a pretty big deal here in Peru. Her name’s Jenny (go figure) and she lives in one of our caserios on the other side of the river. Since her parents are somewhat worthless and her older sisters have long since left the house (well, the town for that matter) she has very little options for a female role model. Now normally I would have hoped a teacher, a neighbor, or another kid in the neighborhood could take this role model position off my hands—but the teachers are only there to receive their pay checks and could care less about teaching, all of her female neighbors never finished primary school, and the older kids hate school. So I guess I’m better than those options right?

Jenny’s always been slightly different from the other girls according to the teachers, she’s “weird” because she likes to play soccer with the boys instead of volleyball with the girls and she actually seems to enjoy math and science portions of her class (however lacking they might be at this school). So basically she was a girl after my own heart before I even met her, soccer playing math geek sounded very familiar to me being the math major tomboy that I am. So I invited her to my math tutoring class on Tuesdays, it’s usually for the kids who are behind in their classes from 1st to 4th grades but I figured I could find something harder for her to do. She’s now finished with her 5th grade math text (a whole 3 months before the school year ends) and has moved on to the 6th grade text.

This past week she showed up at tutoring sporting a Camo Fox Racing hat. Now I will say that this hat is most defiantly of the black market variety, but still, this girl had to have put in some hard hours looking for a camo hat in Peru. I’ve only ever seen mine and one in the airport when the NCSU students came through town. She walked in the door with a grin, trying to hold back her excitement to tell me about her new purchase, but finally gave in and busted out a “Look what I found this weekend in Chiclayo!” while smiling ear to ear. She made a point to show me that they even were the same type of camo—Yes people she made sure she didn’t get the army camo, she got the woodland camo print because that’s what’s on my hat…now that’s hard core.

Needless to say, I’m impressed even if it doesn’t impress ya’ll.

Ok, Stop Drooling Now

It’s a normal trip on the late bus Sunday night heading to Chiclayo. The bus is rather empty, I have an entire seat bench to myself. It’s amazing. My hiking bag full of clothes and work stuff for a meeting in Tumbes is perched on the bench beside me, I’m listening to my iPod and eating my baggie of dinner my host mom sent me with (a potato and tuna) just basking in the seat all to myself. It’s rare to have that much space on public transportation, let along transportation from my site…

I should have known it wouldn’t last. We pull into Oyotun, the city closest to Nanchoc, all of a 30 minute drive. We were met by the Peruvian National Police with very large weapons (They pack heat during parties), they checked our identifications and then we were on our way to the plaza to pick up more people. Next thing I know we’ve managed to squeeze at least 15 other passengers on this bus, putting the head count well above the maximum capacity (or so I thought) of 25. My bag has now been moved to my lap, there is a drunk guy who REEKES of bad Peruvian beer squishing me against the window. We are still trying to figure out how we’re going to fit all of these people on the bus. Kids are sitting on towels on the floor between the aisles, there are 4 grown men sitting 2 and 2 (2 in the laps of the other 2) in the front seat with the driver-- which has left the driver’s wife and 1 year 8 month old daughter seat less. Since my seat was the first one by the door, to accommodate the long gringa legs that I have, of course I was the most likely to be chosen to hold Angie (the baby). Not to mention that I’m the only one in the front of the bus within handing distance that Angie knows. So now I have the hiking bag in my lap, a baby against my chest, a drunk half asleep/squishing me into the window, and 3 drunks sitting in the doorway, one using my knee as an armrest. I shouldn’t have jinxed the empty bus by being happy.

So 1 hour later everyone that is touching me is now drooling…on me. Now I’m ok with a baby drooling on me, especially when it’s a cute baby, but the grown adults, not so cool. The cutest part of this story, other than Angie of course, is that everyone assumed that she was my child. Angie’s mother is very light skinned and has light hair, thusly the baby has a very gringa-like features—which lead to such confusion. So after a long while, long enough for me to completely loose all feeling in BOTH my arms, Angie begins to cry. Then all the women on the bus get really confused as to why I start looking around the bus. Then I explain that the baby that is in fact in my arms is not mine, and if they can see the driver’s wife behind the wall of drunks to get her attention (yeah it’s that loud on my bus that you can’t hear the baby cry). Next thing I know I’d trying to figure out how to lift Angie without dropping her, due to my arms being asleep. After a few seconds of contemplation, finally I manage to lift her over the wall of drooling drunks and into the safety of her mom’s arm and she stops crying.

Now if I could have only gotten the drunk off my shoulder and the other one off my shoe the bus trip would have almost returned to normal. But then 30 minutes later Angie is back in my arms as her mom is collecting money from all of the passengers. And I got a 50% discount for my babysitting duties. All and all, not too bad of a bus ride into town…I could do without the drunks if it happens again.

This is Angie:

The Year in Review

First day of Peace Corps: Sept. 10, 2008

First day in Peru: Sept. 12, 2008

First day of official service: Nov. 28, 2008

First day in site: Dec. 1, 2008

Cell phones lost: NONE! Dern, I just jinxed myself didn’t I?

Books read: 6 finished, 3 started (one’s in Spanish). And for a non-reader that’s a lot.

Favorite book read: I Was Told There’d Be Cake, Sloane Crossley, best book ever for the non-reader

Most days gone without showering: 6, 4 days of the Inca Trail + transportation strikes + spending a night in a train station + arriving in Cusco at 3am and being too tired to shower. Yeah I smelled

Guilty pleasure: eating chocolate and watching Grey’s Anatomy

Favorite Peruvian Culture: “Invitar”ing people to food. Whatever you are eating, you always share (invite) with everyone around you. Eats up a bag of cookies really fast, but makes you feel great afterwards.

Debit cards lost: 1, but it totally doesn’t count, the machine ate it. Not my fault.

Worst habit acquired: putting too much sugar in my hot drinks (tea, chocolate) I’m working on that.

Best thing received in the mail: It’s a tie between 205 toothbrushes from my high school for a project and anything and everything chocolate that arrives.

Why you love your site: The people have amazingly beautiful hearts who have genuinely accepted me into their community and I am honestly sad that a whole year has passed this fast.

The best compliment you’ve received in Peru: “Look, it’s a girl from Argentina! They’re so tall in Argentina!” Yeah, when I don’t talk they think I’m Argentinean and not American. Beat that.

Favorite Peruvian Dish: Aji de Gallina. Yummy spicy chicken goodness.

Most terrifying creature found in your room: a scorpion! Then there was the snake, rat, and the neighbor’s crazy cat.

First place you go in your capital city: Plaza Vea (Peruvian walmart if you will)

First person you call on your cell phone: it rotates between Erica L., Robyn,Sarah Walker, or Kate. I’d die in this country without them.

First person you Skype: Mom and Dad

Most useful item brought with you: My hiking bag

Most useless: All that business casual wear. WTF Peace Corps?

Question you are asked daily: “Why are you so red?” and “te enseñas?” (are you used to it here yet?)

Funniest thing said by a Peruvian child: “dude, you have a TON of mosquito bites,” in reference the pimples the Peace Corps issued sunscreen gives me. I hate you NoAd
Weirdest Health Problem: oh, just the usual day long bathroom hugging experiences and some gastritis.

Projects Started: 7

Projects still working on: 3, what can I say? My town’s real big on starting projects…just not on finishing them. Which helps explain the half constructed bathroom at the school…

Worst over-generalization about the United States made by a Peruvian: They think we only eat canned and microwaveable food, and I’m not talking about convenient canned veggies or the occasional popcorn, they think meals come in cans ready to serve...that just sounds un-tasty and freeze dried.

Favorite pastime in site: playing soccer with the little boys showing them that girls can do anything they can do…and better (let’s ignore the fact that I’m like 10 years older than most of them, I’m a gimp. That evens the playing field)

Favorite past time in the city: finding any movie on cable in English and eating yogurt (we don’t have dairy products in my site) with cereal…yes I’m a dork

Most important self-realization made: I’m way stronger than I thought I was
Best quality learned: The ability to laugh at myself when I completely mess up—be it saying a word wrong or falling flat on my face, I’ve done both more times than I care to admit.

Best purchase in Peru: market bags, amazing woven colorful plastic wonders, no trip to the market could be completed without them. Oh and a yoga mat I use as much for yoga as for taking naps on really hot days when the bed is just not an option.

Coolest thing learned: You can actually grow a tomato in a 3Lt Pepsi bottle hanging upside down just like in the info-mercials, ‘cept I’m not paying $19.99 for some pretty container.

Places visited: Lima (duh), Piura, Cusco and surrounding areas, Machu Picchu, Sipan, and it’s now apparent I need to do more traveling. That’s a sad list.

Favorite place in site: On the trail to Palto (one of my caserios) there is an overlook of the entire valley from a water tank. A sunset at that tank is breathtaking. The hike to get there ain’t half bad either.

Favorite place in Peru: The 3rd night of the Inca Trail. The campsite is above the cloud line so you can watch the sun set below you and see every single star in the Milky Way at night.

Peace Corps in one word, go: Liable.

One thing you’ll never get used to: that it’s perfectly normal to cut in line here…except when in line to buy soccer tickets.

People at site stare the hardest when: I eat raw veggies. They call me the bunny rabbit.

Greatest lengths taken for cell phone reception: one cloudy day my cell phone still didn’t have reception from the rock I usually stand on 1.5 hours from my site, so I climbed up higher (biiiiig mistake) and almost died when a snake (the poisonous kind) scared the begeezes out of me. Never again.

Your site’s Favorite American dish: Pancakes and carrot cake. Not together…but that’s a good idea.

Strangest thing eaten: a soup made from goat guts and brain/skull boiled to death and served with corn. Or possibly the internal part melody served with veggies (liver, lungs, heart, intestines, so on)…strange.

Why we live half way around the world for nest to no pay for 2 years with crap bathrooms: To see that one little kid with the black teeth start brushing them every day because he wants to have teeth that are white like the gringa.

What we can (hardly) wait to return to in the USA: Toilets that I can flush the toilet paper in, Pork BBQ with VINAGER sauce—none of that tomato mess, my bed, my family and my dog, a sandwich loaded down with peanut butter because I no longer have to ration it out, huge salads, being average height again, playing field hockey and lacrosse, sandwiches (yes I meant to say that twice), and last but certainly not least: hearing English every day.


Photo best ofs:

Favorite moment captured:


Wraps-Peru-up-in-one-photo Photo:


Coolest picture taken:


Cutest kid:


Project that rocked: facebook2.jpg


“Oh my God Peace Corps” moment:


Best dancing Photo: (a tie) DSC_0315.2




Favorite place for a sunset:


WTF moment:



Cutest back-story:


Half-way through the marathon of service, here’s to one more awesome year!

Eh, What’s Up Doc?

7:45pm on a Wednesday night. There’s an endless list of things that I could be doing. I could be eating dinner with some friends. I could be watching the stars/planes fly by to Lima. I could be cursing the neighbor’s rooster for being so dumb he’s crowing at night. I could be helping with an emergency at the health post (there’s been a lot of them recently). I could even be writing a literary masterpiece (ok that last bit was a WAY over exaggeration). Oh but the actual action is just so lame, I’m not even sure if I want to write it. Because in me publishing this on the internet my inner dorkiness will take over my outer dorkiness and label me an official dork. And I’m just not sure if I’m willing to go official with my dork status.

OK, before I get carried away and spill the beans let me give some background to explain the action that got me to where I am now. Yes, this is a last ditch effort to save the dork label, so bear with me.

I was reading “I Was Told There’d Be Cake, “by Sloane Crosley (what could be quite possibly my greatest find at the Peace Corps’ Library), it’s a conjunction of semi-non-related essays revealing the author’s rather abnormally-normal life. But one line stuck with me after completing the book in a record time for me (the non-reader) of 1 day (it was really a 4 hour bus ride and a 2 hour hide in my room and read session). “Chastise your inner 12 year old, who is only supposed to rear her head in the face of kittens and swing sets.”

Now, why would I go and do such as thing as chastise my inner 12 year old? However bad my actual life was at 12 years old (I shudder to think, Middle School was NOT good to me) I don’t think that should keep me from digressing to that mind state every-now-and-again. That being said I’m not all for busting out my supply of who knows how many Beany Babies that are in the attic back at the house and playing with them—I am however a-OK for going through and separating the 4 I want to keep from the others and giving those away to the needy. Some 12 year old needs a stuffed animal damnit! Nor am I willing to take out those rollerblades from the garage and start using them, I will admit using them for a Halloween costume my senior year of college, that being said: rollerblades and NC State’s all brick campus on Hillsborough Hike night—not one of our smartest ideas.

But life at 12 was just that much easier. Now I never would have thought I would be in Peru, reading (of all things), and wishing once again to be 12. Ok, not really be 12. I was a klutzy kid with glasses and pimples at 12. But the mindset I could go back to just to visit for a while; back when our greatest worry was the answer to Mr. Lucas’s history homework, or if it would rain and cancel the soccer game that day. Not have to worry about things like money, jobs, laundry (I was a spoiled 12 year old, my mommy did my laundry, you’re jealous I know), relationships (or lack thereof), or if your boss hates you.

That being said, being in the Peace Corps is strangely stressful. You’d think a job volunteering wouldn’t be that bad as far as the stress level’s concerned. I mean I made it through a good 4 years of college and I can honestly say I never resorted to the stress reliving activity that I did tonight. And I was studying Math! That’s a stressful course load. If you don’t believe me track down my study buddies Morgan, Grace, Thomas, and Kenny—just don’t talk to Steamboat, nothing stresses him. Stress and the Peace Corps just go hand in hand, it (in addition to starches, hello a mountain full of rice anyone?) is one of the reasons we all gain the “Peace Corps Pooch” as it’s been called. It’s the volunteer equivalent of the “freshman fifteen.”

But yes, tonight, I resorted to a new low for stress relief. I still can’t quite believe I’m about to say it…well where to start? From the beginning I guess. Well. I lied to my host mom, I told her that I had a headache and didn’t feel like eating dinner. Peace Corps code for “I just really don’t feel like talking Spanish tonight.” Then I locked myself in my room and opened my Rubbermaid-like container that holds all my “gringo food” and got out the beef jerky and chocolate. Now normally that’d be the de-stresser of the night. Beef Jerky and chocolate are 2 of the best things to de-stress. All I was missing was a Mountain Dew (God I sound like way more of a hick than I am…a fatty at that). But seeing as how there was no Mountain Dew inside my box of all things American, I resorted to the next best thing I had…

Are you ready for it? Yes, people. I started watching Looney Tunes. I had brought the DVD set that my mom gave me for Christmas one year (yes, I am an adult I swear) to Peru figuring that it’s just as good dubbed over in Spanish. Turns out, Looney Tunes is not as universal as one might think—the majority of the people I show it here to don’t like it; which brings me back to why I was watching it alone in my room…or so I tell myself. After completing the Bugs Bunny Disc 1 along with a little under a half a bar (big bar) of dark chocolate (thanks again Mrs. Brown!) and 4 big pieces of beef jerky (God I need to start running again) I realized what I had done.

Now feeling like I was an official dork, I realized how freaking tired I was. After I closed the window of the movie I looked at the clock in the bottom corner of my computer screen. Yep, it was only 7:45pm. Yes, not only had I spent who knows how long watching Bugs Bunny and eating junk food, I was also ready for bed at 7:45. My God. I was 12 years old again. At 12 I’m about 85% sure (my memory’s not the best of my Middle School years, like a normal person I try and forget it) that my bedtime was at 9:00pm, 9:30 on a weekend. Wow, so not only was I acting like a 12 year old tonight, I was acting like a 12 year old with the bedtime of a 5 year old, or that of a 75 year old…which ever.

So after feeling the compelling need to write to all of the readers of my blog, however few you might be, and share my moment of shame. My moment of letting the inner dork outshine my outer dork, I guess it’s time to actually go to bed. I figure I didn’t fight the inner 12 year old feeling. I probably shouldn’t try to hold off the tired feeling for too long either. Besides, if I stay awake I might eat more chocolate, and that would not be good for future de-stresser nights. And it’s like 8:30 now. That’s bumped me up to a 10 year old bedtime right?

Picture blog

Tooth Brushing Campaign Pictures:

Salute Your Shorts

Schwartz. It’s a hard last name to pronounce correctly. I vaguely remember learning in a German class that it is actually spelled and pronounced wrong and should be the German word for black. Who knows. All I know is that for approximately 18 years of my life (Aka all the years I spent in school and college) I’ve been called Jennifer Shorts. I was unaware of how hard it is for the average American to say Schwartz. I don’t remember ever having difficulty with it, but I guess I need to ask my parents to get the real answer for that…because I honestly don’t remember learning my last name. I remember how freaking hard it was for me to remember to spell Elizabeth. Looking back on it I can’t for the life of me see why…but I always wanted to write Elezebeth. Guess I liked the letter e a lot.

I remember there was one classmate of mine, who I hate only for this one act because otherwise she is an amazing person. But she said to me one day “Hey there Jenny Salute your Shorts.” Not sure if anyone remembers that tv program that came on Nick, Salute your Shorts, it was about a summer camp and the kids that lived there. I don’t remember anything else, just the impact of the day that she said that phrase. Since then, I’ve been called “Jenny Salute your Shorts” at least 2,000 times in my life. It’s always irritated me. I never really cared if it’s that much easier to say Shorts than Schwartz. I learned to say all the Jewish, Spanish, Czech, and African last names of some of my friends…why’s mine so hard? Akin, I’ll say yours was especially hard.

But how ever hard it is for an English speaker (a Germanic language) to say my German last name—it is SO much harder for a Spanish speaker to even attempt it. But recently every one of my students has started an unofficial competition to see who can, in fact, say my name correctly. So just try to get the mental image of Spanish speakers trying to say my name.
Eswitz
Esctich
Eswwwwwatz
Eswwwwiwwwthcs

Oh the list just keeps going on, but usually there is a face made with each pronunciation. At first they pause to think, then they build up the courage to start with an S, well really an Es because an S is never alone in Spanish, and then as they try to take over the next syllable inevitably they raise an eyebrow or shut an eye as they round 3rd base and try to take on the final syllable the Z sound. It’s an ordeal that they just try over and over again, each time I repeat it the way it should be and they try once again in vain.

Then finally one day, I did the unthinkable…I can’t to this moment even believe that I did it. I told them to say it Shorts. Not just because it’s like WAY easier to say, but because it’s a word that they actually know. Even in Spanish, Shorts is Shorts. So apparently I have made myself Jenny Shorts once again…and I spent all of college being so happy that I got rid of the Shorts. But it seems to be working. Shorts in Spanish sounds scarily similar to Schwartz with the accent. Go figure.

So call me Jenny Salute you Shorts for a little while longer. It’s just easier.

Dear Peru 14 Volunteers

Dear Peru 14 volunteers,

Seeing as how you are all currently in the “holy heck I’m really leaving the country” mindset and trying to decided what in the world should really go into those 2 checked bags that we’re allotted I figured I’d try to help ya’ll out a little. Assuming that you’re all blog stalking like we were before we left the country.

Things I’d have died without:
-My Backpacking hammock—crucial for any excursion to a caserio that winds up lasting WAY longer than intended, also amazing for sticky, hot summer afternoons.
-Laptop—I would not have survived the rainy season (well at least the part that had electricity) without the ability to watch a movie in English.
-External Hard drive—Great for stealing music from your friends…even if you think you won’t listen to it you will. Just wait for the rainy season.
-Rain Jacket and Rain Pants and Gortex boots—yes you see a theme, rain sucks. I was happy I was able to stay dry.
-Hiking Pack—I feel very much like a donkey at times carrying all the stuff we need to give charlas…so the pack just makes that all easier. In addition a Camel Back will make the pack even better.
-Leather Work gloves—I do a lot of shoveling/pick axing/handling metal or animal crud, sometimes it’s just nice to not have to worry about blisters or cutting or burning your hands.
-SUNGLASSES—the sun is just that much stronger here. Even if you didn’t wear them in the States you’ll want them here.
-Chacos—I will have a permanent chaco tan line by the time I’ve completed my Peace Corps service because I wear them 75% of the time, the other 25% it’s either pouring rain and I’m in boots or I’m hiking really far.
-Leatherman—dude, you always need a leatherman.
-Iron Man watch—it’s hard to find a good quality watch here. I’d just bring an extra band…I forgot to do that.
TAMPONS!—They just don’t do tampons here in Peru. I brought a gallon Ziplock full of OB tampons and have still yet to run out (my family also uses them as packing peanuts when they send me stuff). They cost and arm and a leg here.

Things to ignore on that Packing List they gave you:
-I brought WAY more business casual than needed. Really guys, I kid you not, bring one skirt/dress that doesn’t wrinkle very easy, one pair of kakis, and one button up shirt and you are golden. I’ve only worn business casual 3 times, and no one in Peace Corps cares if they always see you in the same shirt. It just makes it easier to remember your name around the office.
-3 Month Supply of stuff—The idea is that we’re short of time to buy that stuff during training…Really if you have enough to get your through a week after Staging in DC you’ll be fine. There is a grocery store (like a real one) a 4 block walk from the training center in Chaclaclayo by the Serpost. You can get anything and everything you need there. It’ll save you some weight on those bags as well.

So basically Peru 14, all I wanted to say was to take a deep breath in. Relax. And enjoy these last few days with friends and family. Enjoy all of your favorite things American because you won’t be seeing any (or much) of them here in Peru. Enjoy JIF Peanut Butter, good cheese, sliced deli meat, solid yogurt, bagels, real ketchup, pork barbeque, thick and good tasting hamburgers, and last but defiantly not least, your family’s cooking. Don’t forget to soak up as much time in your favorite places, the mountains and beaches are beautiful here, but they are still not like home. So enjoy your favorite things, take a lot of pictures to bring with you and share all of those memories with your new Peruvian families.

I’ll probably see ya’ll around the training center at some point. Travel safe, and take care of each other. We’re the only English-speaking family we’re going to have for 2 years.
-Jenny

English Sucks

Talking with my host dad today over lunch I figured something out. Americans, well all English speaking people, we’re selfish. Ok well not all of us, but our language sure as heck is. Now hear me out before you think that I’ve gone and changed my citizenship to Peruvian (I may have thought about it after this past election…but I’ll stay American for now).

We were talking about my “capacatacion.” It’s a Spanish word that means a capacatation. See, Microsoft Word hates me for even trying to turn that into English. “Capacitar,” Spanish for “to capacitate.” Word doesn’t hate me for that…to capacitate someone, that verb exists, but the noun doesn’t. Now that’s selfish. We’ll take the credit in English for giving the information, to capacitate them, but it just doesn’t have the same significance that it does in Spanish.

I looked it up in my University of Chicago Spanish-English dictionary.
Capacitar: VT to train, to qualify.

That’s the definition…sorta, ok not really. Here in Peru when we talk about capacitating someone it has a deeper meaning than training. Training someone has a different signification. To train someone implies drilling a concept in their head. You can train in a sport, but that usually gives the connotation of a fat old guy yelling at some slim athlete to do the things that he can’t do any more. You can train a dog to sit on command, but that involves a lot of treat giving and yelling and frustration before you reach the goal. Training just doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t paint the right picture.

To capacitate is more than to train. Yes it’s giving someone information, it is informing, but it goes so much further than that in Spanish. Capacatacion. To define it in Spanish is so beautiful. My host dad once said “capacitación es nada mas de brindar a la gente alguna información o técnica para mejorar su concomimiento o su vida.” Yes I will translate that for you all. “Capacatation is nothing more than to volunteer some sort of information or technique to the people.” Brindar is another one of these words that is just so much cooler in Spanish that in English that I won’t get into today, but literally it means to toast (like to give a toast).

So here in Peru to capacitate someone holds such a different meaning than in the states. It’s not just giving them the information, it’s a combination of that, giving information with the person WANTING to receive the knowledge and fully understand and take ownership of that information. See that, they took the instructor out of capacitating the people—now that’s selfless. The actual act of capacitating has next to nothing to do with the person who has the knowledge, and almost everything to do with the person wanting to receive the knowledge. Take that. We can’t even do that in English. It’s all verb, no noun exists. And certainly nothing exists that would take the do-er out of the situation like it does in Spanish.

It’s a common mistake made by most Peace Corps Volunteers when they return to the United States, to say Capacitation. We just get so used to the idea, to the concept, that we forget that our native language doesn’t have that concept, doesn’t have that word. So when we go to interviews and when we are looking for jobs I’m sure that some of the employers or the interviewers think that we’re we’ve forgotten how to speak English. While to an extent we have forgotten to speak English it’s more of English failing to reflect a concept so inherent in the Spanish language and us trying to relay that concept to people who may not speak Spanish and who don’t understand what we want to say.

**Note to Mr. Lang, my 12th grade AP English teacher who can attest to me being the worst student he’s ever had (ok that could be an exaggeration…but probably not) and to my Mother the walking grammar dictionary of my childhood:
I know, I’m probably the last person on Earth who should have tried to explain this concept. And there is a good chance that no one outside of the Peace Corps in a Spanish speaking country will ever understand what we’re trying to say when we say Capacitation. But it was worth a try. Sorry if you all have a headache.

Brush, Brush, Brush Your Teeth

Finally! The Tooth Brushing Campaign has begun! Thanks to the lovely help from Durham, North Carolina’s Riverside High School and their donation of 205 toothbrushes (as mentioned in my earlier blog) I have been able to start the Campaign. We started off strong, literally, by walking a few hours straight up the mountain to visit Palto, one of the further out caserios of Nanchoc and were greeted by 25 students excited to see what I had in my hiking pack for them…well that was after I promised about 500 times that I wasn’t there to give them shots. You see, they live so far away, that the majority of the little kids only see the Health Post workers when it’s time to get a shot. And since a lab technician came with me, their first reaction was to run further up the hill and hide.

So once I was able to convince them that I in fact was there to give them a lesson and to play a game, not stick them in the arm with a needle, the real fun (I mean work…just in case my boss is reading this) began. I had made a “television” out of cardboard and filled it with poster board. Each poster board has a picture on it, and we “show the movie” while their professor read the story of “Monchito el Golosinero” which translates along the lines of “Little Moncho, the Sweet Tooth.” I love the reaction I get from the kids doing this presentation. Their eyes are fixed on the TV screen, mouths gapping open, exclusively watching the movie. It’s amazing. I get such a great high off of that, knowing that the kids actually enjoy something that took me quite literally forever and a half to finish.

After the video I asked a few questions. I figured the movie went over so great, let’s see what they learned. I started off simple, “Why did Monchito get cavities in the story?” I was met with nothing more than 25 blank stares. So I tried again. “In the story, Monchito got cavities after eating too much of what?” Nothing. At this point I was trying extremely hard to not turn bright red and regress back to my entire schooling career and my fear of giving presentations in front of groups of people. Stuttering, oh yes people, I stuttered this part, I asked “Raise your hand if you understand me.” One kid raised his hand. A boy named Lucho who had been in the health post every day this summer to receive treatment for a bug bite that eats the flesh around where it bites—so needless to say he had heard me talk when I couldn’t talk at all, this was an improvement. The entire class turns and gives Lucho the “what the heck did she just say” face and he explains to the class “Jenny wants to know if we understand her.” I received 25 headshakes of “no.”

Damn. Remember that high I was talking about with the presentation…gone. So I took a deep breath and remember something Terry Dash once told me. Terry is an instructor at NCSU for the Outdoor Leadership programs and was my teacher for Backcountry Skills. In that class we had to give presentations on outdoor skills techniques and he told me that I talk unbelievably fast when I give presentations. He didn’t say the why part, but the why part is that I get so nervous giving presentations that I shake and want to get the whole thing over with as fast as possible…so I talk fast. Remembering that I though…hmm speed-talking gringo-Spanish just might be the problem.

I took another deep breath and repeated, at a turtle’s pace, “Raise your hand now if you can understand me.” Thank God. There were at least 22 hands that went up. Ok, I have them back. Then I proceeded to ask the rest of my questions just to make sure they got the story. Success! They all answered (in unison) all the questions correctly and then all participated in a game. It was great.

To use a bad saying for this situation, I then put the sprinkles on top by bringing out the tooth brushes. “Ok guys. Remember how I said that I’m from the United States? Well I have a class over there that wanted to give you guys a present…They sent me toothbrushes from the United States, one for each of you.” You’d have thought I was Santa Clause. They formed a nice and neat line and one by one took a toothbrush from the bag and I noted one huge difference from what I’m used to State-side. There was no looking for their favorite color, rummaging around in the bag trying to find the “best” or the “coolest” looking toothbrush, one by one they all grabbed a toothbrush and stared at it as if it could possibly come to life at any moment. Some boys had pink ones or purple ones, one guy had glitter on his, and unlike in any classroom in the United States they weren’t trying to switch with the girl beside them who had a red or green one. They just stared at their very own tooth brush.

“Look mine’s got a gel handle! IT’S SQUISHY!”
“OOO mines got bumps on the back!”
“Mine’s got the gel too!
“Look! You can see through mine and it makes things bigger!”

They spent about 2 minutes just getting to know the ins and outs of their toothbrushes. Ones from the states are far more advanced than the cheap Peruvian toothbrushes. Forget a tongue cleaner, or gel handles, or funny bristles to get the crud out from your teeth, Peruvian cheap drug store toothbrushes don’t even have that little rubber get-the-crud-out-from-your-teeth nub. This was just mind blowing.

“So who’s ready to practice brushing their teeth??” I asked. A roar of “I AM!!!” told me it was time to pass out the toothpaste. I put a little bit on each brush, I did it to show how little they’d need, and then we began brushing teeth. I figured it’d be best for me to do it with them and explain as we go. Seemed like a great idea. We started out with the brushing up and down on the front teeth, the sides, and then we moved to the sides. Right about the sides I realized the flaw in my plan. It’s hard as heck to talk with a mouth full of toothpaste foam. Choking back the toothpaste I talked them through the other side, the insides, then the tongue and we all ran to the side of the hill to spit off into the grass and wash our toothbrushes with a water bottle I filled with water and put a hole in the top to make a squirter. It went great! The kids loved it! Their parents might be extremely confused as to where the neon blue toothpaste streaks are on their jackets…it seems that a few of the kids had issues with a mouth full of toothpaste as well. But all and all a great trip!

I handed out stickers, we decorated empty Pepsi bottles with their names and drawings to put their toothbrushes in (to keep the dust and dirt off of them) and then signed a contract to brush their teeth every day after snack time and to always leave the toothbrush at the school. Then I said my goodbyes, and started back down the hill to my house with a minty fresh clean feeling.


(PS. pictures will be coming soon. I just forgot my camera this trip. Sorry)

Light the Fire

We recently had IST (In Service Training) in Pozo de las Ramos, Piura. All of the remaining Health Volunteer and a community partner arrived ready to learn all we could about latrine construction, improved wood burning stove construction, gardens, raising animals, and Early Childhood Development. Needless to say it was a JAMMED packed 4 days of lessons, and my favorite, hands on learning.



I brought with me to the meeting my most active Health Promoter, Andres Huertas Canerio. He was extremely excited to learn all the ins and outs of construction of stoves and latrines, and coming from a background in construction, I just felt he was the perfect match for the meeting--I was totally right! Andres is the guy you call in my town when your water pipe bursts, or you need to build an adobe house, or your bean crop is dying from a plague and you need help. He’s the Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor of Nanchoc if you will. He asked so many questions during the meetings that some of the other people got mad thinking we’d never leave—it may have frustrated some people, but I was as proud as I could be. I think I might have actually found one member of the community who’s ready to light a fire under the rear ends of the people of Nanchoc and get to working!



Now I’m hoping I’m not speaking too soon saying that. I really do hope that Andres and I, together with the Health Post and other Promoters, can finally get some projects going. Now that Andres has actually seen how freaking easy (and relatively cheap) it is to build an improved wood burning stove, he’s ready to build. He even wants one of the first ones we’re going to make. Our new game plan is to build 7 (you buy one big piece of metal that makes 7 stoves) stoves as part of a pilot program, putting them in influential houses in the community—Andres’s house, my house, Carmen (a lady at the health post who EVERYOE knows), Teo (the lady who owns the phone), the soup kitchen in Andres’s neighborhood, and one at the health post, the other slots are still up for grabs. But I’m excited that we seem to have a plan. In this up coming week we will be getting in contact with sellers of the metal we need to find a cheap price and hopefully start building by mid-September if all goes smoothly.

Not only did we get the stove project underway, but I found my new favorite way to grow veggies. The guy who was teaching about gardens happens to live in a city, so he has next to no space to grow veggies in. Seeing as how it’s like his job to teach people how to grow things, he figured it’d be rather hypocritical of him to not grow them himself and started growing plants on a shelf…sorta. The idea is to build a 2 story growing platform. Envision a bunk bed, but instead of a mattress there is a bin to grow stuff in.

Now I took this idea one step further. I’ve been trying for MONTHS to get my host family on board for a garden, and I wanted a bunny. They told me that there was no space for a garden at the house, it’s true, our patio is chock full of trees, so there’s not a ton of room…but there is some, but that I could build a little hutch for a bunny if I wanted. As long as it was just one bunny. So, I took the guy’s idea for the bunk bed system of growing and changed it a little… I’m going to have a bunny house on the bottom bunk, and veggies growing on the top bunk! I know, super great idea Jenny! I know, I’m proud of myself for thinking it up too.

Tomorrow (18th of Aug to be exact) I’m going to dig the holes to put the posts in, and walk about an hour with the donkey and start begging for people to give me 1 or 2 stalks of bamboo to get building. Usually people don’t give away bamboo…it’s like the duct tape of my site, now I know that you can’t tape things together with bamboo, but you can build damn near anything out of it. But I’m hoping my status as a gringa will help me get some for free…and if not as the gringa, as the broke gringa who knows how to build a latrine and is willing to share that knowledge. So here’s hoping that in the next blog I’m talking about my complete bunny hutch/garden combo and putting my focus on planting and buying me a bunny rabbit. No clue what I’ll name him, but if he’s gray I might have to be uncreative and name him Bugs Bunny…and maybe find me a black duck to name Daffy. I mean the neighbor’s cat’s already named Sylvester.

Cowboy Meets Peru

This week I was fortunate enough to have one of my best friends come and visit me in Peru! His name’s Josh, we mostly just call him the cowboy because that’s his job description. It was rather funny to watch a boy who us used to the country life of the United States adjust to Peru—both the city part and the country part.

I went to Lima to go and pick him up from the airport, and spent most of the day hanging with the host family waiting on his flight to come in at 11pm. Everyone had a lot of questions about the mystery gringo that was coming to visit. “How blue are his eyes?” “Like how tall is tall?” “Wait, he gets paid to hunt?” “What do you mean he doesn’t speak Spanish??” were just a few of the questions I got to answer. My host brother-in-law and I went to the airport around 11 to wait for him to come out of customs. Now I’m not sure if it was the fact that I hadn’t actually seen Josh in over a year, or just the shock from a few plane-full of gringos walking out of the international terminal doors in the airport…but it was A LOT harder than I thought it would be to find him. I was thinking before I got to the airport that it could only be so hard to pick a 6’2” reddish-blonde haired and bearded guy that’s probably wearing plaid out of a crowd. Apparently I had overestimated my ability to scan a crowd. If he hadn’t been wearing a CAT (Caterpillar) hat I might not have found him until after he had walked around the lobby for an hour.



Once safely out of the airport and all the craziness that is included in that we made it to the Peace Corps crash pad in Lima around 1. The tour of Lima started the next day. Now ya’ll know I’m really not a great tour guide, so I did my best…but we went to go see Larco Mar first, the fancy shopping mall positioned at the top of a cliff overlooking the beach. It was our first visit mainly so we could switch out his US money to Peruvian Soles. I hadn’t seen American money in so long it was kinda a nice memory to see them. I forgot that it was all (mostly) green. And I’m pretty sure they’ve changed the $5 since I left. When I get back to the States I’m sure I’ll be having some real issues. None of the money will look the way I remember. But after Larco Mar I took him to my favorite (funniest) park in Lima: Parque de Amor, the Park of Love. Now before ya’ll get confused, let me explain why it’s my favorite park in Lima. The whole part is built around a HUGE statue of 2 people making out…it’s just one of those things that you stare at much like a car wreck. You’re not sure why you’re staring, but you just can’t seem to pull your eyes off of it.

After the shock of the park, we went to a fair in Baranco that had art and textiles from around Peru on display and for sell along with Peruvian food for sell. Josh tried his first Pisco Sour—the national drink. It’s Pisco (a clear grape liquor) mixed with lime juice and egg whites. I’m not a big fan, but Josh seemed to enjoy his. He wasn’t however able to finish it, they made it REALLY strong and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet…so probably for the best he didn’t finish it or I would have been dragging him around Lima. Once we had had our fill of The Peruvian Culture Fair we went in search of food and ate a light lunch since my host family had invited us to Pollo a la Brasa ( Rotisserie chicken) for dinner. That night after supper we got on the bus and Josh had his first taste of a 12 hour bus ride from Lima to Chiclayo.

Now I can safely say he wasn’t a fan of the bus ride…but then again, I don’t know many people who are a fan. It’s rather hard to get a good night sleep on a bus, even if the seat leans way back and has a foot rest, just because us gringos tend to be larger than the seats. But we made it to Chiclayo and proceeded to pass out sleeping for all of the morning in the Peace Corps hotel in Chiclayo (where I always stay). I gave Josh the tour of town after our power naps. There were a lot more people around than normal because we were there 2 days before the Peruvian Independence day and all the partying had already begun. We went to all the usual stops, the grocery store, the mall like place (hey he may have been here for Peruvian culture, but I needed my American culture fix), and just walked around and saw the sights. We also went to Lambayeque to see the Museum. It was a really good exhibit. It had artifacts found in and around the region of Lambayeque on display, and…MUMMIES! My favorites were these little gold figures about 2” tall.





After the culture lesson we hit up the King Kong fair across the street. I think I’ve explained King Kong to everyone before, but just in case, here we go again: King Kong is the regional dessert of Lambayeque. Its layers of a butter cookie with fillings, the fillings range from chocolate, to caramel, to jellied fruit. It winds up looking a lot like a brick of cookied goodness. While it is very good, it’s also very dry and I would not recommend eating it without a glass of milk or a cup of tea or coffee nearby. We then went back to the hotel to enjoy the last of American TV while we had it (the hotel gets movies and shows that sometimes are in English) because we were heading to Nanchoc the next day.

And what a surprise we had waiting for us at the bus terminal: THE NEW COMBI!!! Rojas, the family that runs the bus system at my site FINALLY bought another bus. So we got to ride back to Nanchoc in the big new shiny bus! How fun (at least for me, I don’t think Josh was that impressed). When we were on the bus Josh got mistaken for the volunteer that lives above us in Bolivar by Michael’s 11 month old host sister. She spent the entire bus ride staring at him or crying because her mom wouldn’t let her go sit with Josh. Once in Nanchoc my work officially began. And not my Peace Corps work, the government moving up vacations had killed any and all chances of working this week, but my work as a translator. I’ve decided becoming a professional translator is defiantly not one of the more entertaining jobs in the world. It’s rather frustrating and complicated and leads to one end: The loss of ability to talk intelligently in either language.

But once in Nanchoc, I think Josh realized just how…not jam-packed…his vacation would be. Since the school vacations got moved up there was no option of doing the fun cool things I had planned (giving a lesson on teeth brushing, and playing soccer with the kids, or working in the garden) so I just had to improvise—which is a hard thing to do in the middle of nowhere Peru. We managed to find a few things to do. We went fishing with a cousin and his family and my best friend in site (the nurse) down at the river in Tinges. Josh managed to catch his first Cash-Ca (that ugly fish I was talking about in an earlier blog), which is a good thing, because I don’t think he would have stopped fishing until he caught one. Let’s just say he’s got a bit of a competitive streak in him, and the other guys catching 11 and his none just wouldn’t have done. I think the visit would have been even more fun for him if he could speak better Spanish. Tito, the cousin, is an avid hunter and had a ton of stories to tell and questions to ask Josh—the only problem, I can honestly say that my Spanish vocabulary on hunting terms is not up to par. They were impressed that Josh new a few words that I didn’t, to his credit he did work in a hunting camp in Texas and Mexico, so he had practice—I had no idea what they were talking about. I just filled in the gaps in their conversations when it went to hunting. I can talk all day about most things in my site…hunting is not one of them. But Tito has invited Josh back to Nanchoc to go and hunt deer and mountain lions…doubtful that Josh will actually come back, but the gesture was really nice.






In addition to catching fish, we went to go and see some ruins at my site. There is a spot that has rocks with engravings of animals and people and symbols along with these huge holes in the middle of nowhere (more so than my town). We went one day to try and find them ourselves. And I have found (once again) that Peruvian’s aren’t really that good at giving directions. I found where I thought the rocks probably were, but we just couldn’t find a way to get up there to them…2 days later we went back with our guides (local kids) and I’ll be damned if we didn’t get taken right back to the same spot I tried to get us to before. The only difference, they knew how to get to the top…dern. But we had fun walking around the rocks and looking for all the engravings. We’re not sure what most of them are, they are really worn down from all the rain that we get in my site. But I plan on going back with paper and crayons and taking rubbings of them—maybe that will help.

And that about sums up the gringo’s visit to Peru. I’m about 99% sure Josh was expecting to do more on the trip…I mean Peru has so many cool things to do…but it was just a bad time politically to do much of anything. The president had moved up vacations and cancelled most big Independence Day celebrations. To that cramped most of my plans. Hopefully he doesn’t regret his trip to Peru. I mean, he can now at least say he’s eaten (and not really liked) a Guinea Pig, the strangest (and worst by American standards) cuts of pork, and yucca. And if nothing else maybe I’ve finally convinced him to learn a little bit of Spanish for his next hunting gig down by the boarder. Who knows, I was happy to have the American visitor and to get to speak a lot of English for a little while. Not to mention catching up with a friend. Maybe I’ll get another non-family visitor from the states during my time here, who knows.

River-what? Riverside!

Ok so that may be old school at this point...but its what we said back in the day of Riverside High School 2000-2004. But the end point is that RHS Students basically rock. Why you might ask? Oh well grab a seat and I will tell you:

Last school year (for them) Ms. Davidson's International Relations class asked me if there was anything that they could do to help with a project in my site. Obviously I can't ask them to raise enough money to to a latrine project...lets face it, the NC School system needs that amount of money to put towards hiring more teachers. But I figured that they could help me with toothbrushes. Tooth Brushing is a daily habit majorly overlooked here in the campo of Peru. Most of the people I know...well in fact ALL of the people I know, even the Health Post Staff, have at least 3 cavities (not that the Peace Corps Volunteer doesn't have her share...So I was a rebellious child...I'm sorry mom!). Then even more are missing at least 3 or 4 teeth due to tooth extractions--my health post doesn't have the instruments to fill cavities, they just get to be so bad that they take the whole tooth out.

So obviously the best way to counter this trend of toothless Nanchoc-citizens, something must be done, and it must be done from the little ones right on up. Well I got my starting hand from Ms. D's IR class. I asked them for 150 tooth brushes. That would be enough for every child in my community between the ages of 4 and 8 to receive a tooth brush. And they sent me 205! Now that's what I'm talking about!

I've yet to give a lesson on tooth brushing to students, I have given the lesson to the health promoters with the help of some local kids. I'm looking forward to the end of winter vacations (which got pushed up 2 weeks due to the pig flu...) so that I can start giving the lessons! The game plan:

To start in the poorest caserios of my town, Aventuranza, Tingues, and Palto with their kindergarten through 2nd grade classes (which is around 35 kids) and then to move on to the actual Town of Nanchoc. I can't wait to start! I have made up a "television" out of a big box that I fill with slides. Each slide has a picture that corresponds to a story about the dangers of not brushing your teeth (aka cavities). The end product is that the kids feel like their watching a movie, not receiving a lesson. After the "movie" we're going to play a game. With 4 or 5 volunteers we will create our "mouth." The volunteers are the teeth. The other students in the class will stick with tape pictures of candy and sweets all over their classmates. Then we must "brush" our teeth with the "tooth brush," aka broom, until all clean!

When I get to giving lessons I will be sure to take LOTS of pictures for the IR class and post them all. A big ol thanks to RHS and all their hard work in getting me those tooth brushes! You guys are a great bunch of students!

Why Do I Bang My Head Into The Wall? Because It Feels So Good When I Stop.

I can’t remember where I first heard that quote. I’m pretty sure it was Grey’s Anatomy episode…some of the best lines I know come from that show. Don’t hate.

Why do I bang my head in the wall? Because it feels so good when I stop. Believe it or not, that actually translates into Spanish quite well. “? Porque estoy golpeando mi cabeza con la pared? Pues, porque siento riquísimo cuando me pare.”

Why might one need to use such a phrase in Peru you might ask? Simple. I assisted my first, and probably last, active budget proposal. What might that be you ask…well it’s a time where the representatives of the organizations and communities come together in the mayor’s office to talk about dividing up the community project budget.

Wait, I just described that way too orderly. It’s really a time where 30 people who are semi-organized come together to yell and scream and literally take their shoe off and slam it into the floor demanding that the government hear why they need a project done in their caserio more than that dude’s over there.

Yeah, sounds like fun doesn’t it? Well see I didn’t know what exactly I was in for when I arrived in the Health Post this morning. I came with one goal: To talk to Carlos, the guy in charge of the environmental concerns of Nanchoc, about the disgrace of a landfill the Mayor has built along the road. It’s horrible! I’m not even sure he dug a hole for the landfill. It looks to me more like he found a spot where with the way the wind blows the sand it created a shallow pit, maybe 4 feet deep, and started dumping tractor loads of trash in the whole. Now as common sense would tell you, if the wind created that hole, then the wind is damn well certain to lift all of the trash out of said hole. Needless to say we’re blowing trash all over the town and into the river. Then to rub a little salt in the wound that is the trash dump, it’s also laying in the middle of a flood plane...oh yes, when December comes around what trash that is left in the hole, that didn’t blow out that is, will be washed straight into the river.

Oh the joy I find when going for an early morning run in my site. Badly made dumps. At least I now know why the Mayor was avoiding showing me said dump for the past 2 months. Even he must have known that it was a mess.

Ok so I’ve gotten sidetracked. Yes that is why I originally showed up the Health Post. To talk. Then Carlos mentioned that there was this active budget proposal meeting and that I should go with the Doctor to mention the horrors that are the dump. GREAT IDEA I thought…

Ok so it all started out great, we talked about the vision of Nanchoc, what we all want to see by 2014, what big projects need to be done to reach those goals. It was all quite orderly and calm. Well that was the first 2 hours. By noon I guess everyone’s stomach’s began to turn on them. The mean came out. People started fighting over why their caserio deserved the money more than another…that is when I knew it would be a fun day. By 1 the representatives of the government decided it was time for a break and lunch. A little cooling off period if you will.

After lunch, things just got worse. Not because of the participants, the lunch had done them all good. They were calm and organized even cooperating and suggesting joint projects to benefit multiple caserios. Oh no, this time the problem was the government. Now it could be that I’m a math major, or that I’m a gringa who occasionally points out flaws in plans when it comes to number crunching…but I became the least favorite member of the community by one of the council members…

So the mayor had told us that we had S./134,400 this upcoming year (2010) for projects. Between 6 caserios that’s S./22,400 per caserio. Roughly $7,466. You can do a fair amount of work in Peru for that amount of money. Palto wanted a new bridge to be built, or maybe a community center, Adventuranza won my heart by saying they wanted a latrine project (in coordination with the Peace Corps volunteer!), Tingues wanted to fix an irrigation canal, Hacienda Vieja wanted to fix their water system, Carahuasi wanted to do the same, and Nanchoc wanted to rebuild the police station…which is literally about to fall down. All of which were reasonable with about S./22,400.

Then the other shoe dropped. The mayor realized he had forgotten to mention a few things that we’d have to take out of the budgeted money. S./34,400 for contractors and paying taxes on community work projects (yeah I didn’t understand it either). And then another S./ 15,000 for “extenuating circumstances” that could happen during the rainy season. Akaadded costs of fuel and the like from muddy roads. So…as a math major, I raised my hand…the first time I had done so the whole day. I figured it wasn’t really my place to decide where the money goes, I already had my latrine pitch, I was happy with that. But I raised my hand and said:

“Mr. Mayor, excuse me but I’m a little confused. You origionally said that we were going to be given S./134,400 for community projects is this correct?” “Yes,” he replied. “Ok, well that would have given us S./22,400 for each project, and we had planned the projects for today’s meeting based on that number. But now you are taking S./49,400 from the budget. That’s taking about 40% of the budget out of play.”

And then there was a silence. I waited a few seconds for him to respond, he said nothing…so I continued…

“So we went from having a little over S./22,000 for each caserio for a project, to S./14,166 for each project. That’s a big difference.”

You could see the wave of light bulbs clicking on in the room. I guess I was the only one who had done the math in their head. That’s when the disorder began…my bad. I won’t go into the details, but luckily it was all verbal arguments, aside from the slamming of a shoe (it came from a bag, not off a foot) to make a point, it didn’t get too violent. And after 3 hours of yelling it appeared that everyone just gave up. We weren’t going to get that S./49,400 back from the mayor. So it wasn’t worth anymore of or time fighting for it.

The meeting ended undecided the actual amounts that will be given to each project, the newly founded comities’ going to decide. And the council must have not held a grudge on my math, because they asked me to be the president of the town’s Patron Saint’s party. After being informed that that means having to organize everything, I said “no thank you” and left to head home to eat supper.

So why do I bang my head into the wall? Because it feels so good when I stop. That might have been a waste of my time…after all nothing was really accomplished…but it made a good story.